So far today has been a slow day. I finished ironing nearly every pair of pants in the house. Ironing is a gruelling exercise because I tend to put it off until it is 100% necessary to do it. When no one has pants and the stack in the basement waiting beside the ironing board is taller than I am then I drag the CD player downstairs, pick up a pair of pants, turn my back to the pile and just start. It went relatively well today because I let them tumble in the dryer for a few minutes to get soft before I ironed them (One of mom’s tricks that actually works.).
I talked to Bethany this morning. She told me about starting her tae kwon do lessons. The plan is to try it for a month and see how she likes it. Apparently she learned front, side and back kick, as well as how to break a person‘s hand. So soon she will have to be registered as a lethal weapon and there will be no way anyone can even begin to tickle her without risking their lives. I absolutely love her enthusiasm for it.
Mom and Dad’s 23rd anniversary is this weekend, which is pretty exciting. I never thought much about how peculiar and special my family was until I got into high school. In high school I realized that a huge portion of my classmates had parents who were divorced. It’s pretty special that when my parents placed rings on their fingers and made promises to stay together they meant it. They weren’t getting married for the weekend, they were in it for life. I can’t imagine one without the other. They met in the 7th grade and they’ve been close ever since. Maybe that’s why I can’t think of marriage as anything but forever and I can’t imagine feeling ready to be married at 20. Yet several of my former classmates are doing just that. Even more scary, at least 6 that I know of already have kids. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that because to me it just seems surreal.
I talked to Elizabeth this evening which was really awesome although it kind of made me feel lonesome. I miss her already and she’s hardly been gone a week. I don’t have a lot of friends that I’m able to just talk on and on about God with and not feel self conscious or really inadequate. So it’s always really awesome to talk to her and tonight was no exception.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately because, as I calculated back in June, I will have just over 8000 dollars by the beginning of October. By the end of December I will have saved a whole years worth of tuition. So it would appear that now is the time to dream and make some real decisions. That’s all really good in theory but when it comes right down to it I don’t know what to do with my life. I really do not want to go into debt just to go to school. It should not be necessary and it should not be ‘normal’. If I serve a God who is fully capable of taking care of all of my needs then shouldn’t that include school tuition? I can’t help but think that it should. I will teach but I have my doubts that I will teach in a traditional sense or in a typical place. That in itself makes my next step difficult to determine.
I watched a short video clip about a school being built in India by Mission of Mercy last night. The cycle of poverty in India is generations strong. The people of India are either really rich or really poor; people are either born into privilege or they’re born into poverty. Climbing out of this cycle of poverty is next to impossible without outside help. The population of India is booming and is exceeded only by China. An enormous percentage of the population is under 30 years of age, making it one of the youngest populations in the world. Most of the population has never attended school. With that in mind it is easy to see that what Mission of Mercy is attempting is amazing and terribly needed. They showed photographs of the building and the land that they had purchased. It is an enormous building with several levels and plenty of space. It used to be a tannery and the very first images of the building are very dark and industrial, but as they showed them they shared their vision and their dream. A photo of a large yard flooded and filled with debris at the entrance of the building was proudly presented as the location of a future playground where the children would laugh and relax when they weren‘t in class. They showed pictures of people working on the wiring in freshly painted white rooms and expressed hopes that these rooms would soon be filled with desks and eager children. Their enthusiasm was contagious and genuine. I would love to be involved with a school like that in any way possible.
But what I found really interesting was that when completed, they will be able to teach the gospel to the students who attend classes. They are legally able to do this because India is a democracy. In fact, because of the reputation that Mission of Mercy has in India the government is more than happy to see their work succeed because they are ’for the development of India’. The vision and goal of their organization is to build a better India by helping to abolish the cycle of poverty through education, healthcare and feeding programs. The government is relatively friendly towards them because of their intentions, and yet the majority of the population remains non-Christian. My only answer for why that might be is because not enough people are going and being the hands and feet of Jesus in India. What is that verse? The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. I found it extremely interesting in any case and it definitely made me think. I went to bed that night filled with warm thoughts, tears and prayers of thanks for their faithfulness and for the people of India.
God has always been a huge part of my life and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I want to do his will. I don’t want to live my life for me. But I don’t know if I understand what it means to ‘do his will’. Certain things bother me so much that they make me angry. The way that poverty lives on for generations is one of those things that makes me furious. The fact that education, especially post secondary education, is something that is ‘beyond’ the reach of so many people is another. So maybe there’s a reason that it upsets me. Maybe there’s something I can do to change it. I’ve always felt drawn to missions but with everything else turned upside down in my life I no longer know whether that’s the route that I actually want to take.
*Wrote September 9th. Technical difficulties made it so I couldn't post it.*
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